The Dark Soul Read online

have some kind of other sensory receptors that we humans would not be able to understand, and I’m not going to pretend I do.

  The only thing it could do was shove the body back and forth, like a cat would do inside a plastic bag.

  I’m not going to try to convince you that what I did next was a good thing, or even a human thing, but I never said I was a good person, did I?

  What I did do next, as you might think, was wrong. At the time, though, I thought it was the next step. It was the only way, and to be honest, I was just itching to do it. Itching. I needed to know more about this. It’s true what they say: Curiosity does kill. But in this case, as you will see, it wasn’t a cat.

  I still don’t know if I think it was wrong, to be honest. But I do know that if I had never done it, I wouldn't be here today, and… well, you’ll find out why I’m excited about that.

  So after my morning tea, which I made in my kitchen, I grabbed my Jeep keys and took a ride into town. It was some cold place under a railroad bridge where all the homeless people would hang out where I stopped my Jeep, and all of the men (a few sickly looking women too) wearing mittens and blankets like capes, gazed at me. I stepped out, rubbing my hands together, and shouted out across all of them; my voice echoed across the graffiti covered walls. “Who here would like to make five hundred dollars,” is what I had said. Technically it wasn’t a lie because I never said I was going to give them the money, I just asked if they would like to make the money.

  A few of them started towards me, but surprisingly, the majority of them seemed disinterested. There was an older black man, and a white man about the same age, both nodding with half smiles. The white man spoke, and he sounded Irish. “What will you have us do?” His voice was low, and weak.

  “Just test something out,” I said in an equally low tone. “But I only need one of you.”

  “Well which one of us?” the black man asked.

  “Whoever is cheaper.” I grinned.

  “I’ll do it for three hundred,” the black man bargained, not really even knowing what the job was.

  “I’ll do it for one hundred.”

  “Sold,” I said pointing at the Irish man and started back for my Jeep. He followed.

  “Well hold on just a minute,” the black man called, but I was already getting in.

  The Irishman was draped in a blanket when we came into the barn. I didn’t blame him; it was freezing. But I asked him to take it off. His shirt too. He complied.

  “Do you have anything I can eat?” he asked.

  “Uh, I have sandwich stuff inside. Can you wait until we’re done?”

  “How long is this going to take, mister?”

  “Not long at all.”

  He nodded, and followed me to my machine; he was eyeing both me and it. Then he turned when he heard the cage rattling from behind him on the table. I had placed a sheet over it, though, so he wasn’t able to see the hideous creature inside. But he did ask, “What’s that?”

  “Can’t say,” I said, and opened the glass door on the soul trapper.

  “Why not?” His voice was uneasy.

  “It would freak you out.”

  He wasn’t sure what to say at that, I could tell, but he watched the cage anxiously.

  “Come on. Step inside of here,” I said, gesturing for him to enter the contraption.

  Now he really looked unsure of the whole situation. I had to remind myself that he was desperate, not stupid, and that there was a difference.

  He looked at me questioningly for a moment. “I don’t think I want to,” he said, shaking his head, and turning to glance at the barn door I had locked behind us. “I— I think I want to go.”

  “It’s far too late for that, my friend.” I knew that if I let him go he might tell on me. Yes, like a second grader; he would whine to the authorities. “There was a loony man tryin’ to get me to go inside this glass container! HE MADE ME TAKE OFF MY CLOTHES!” he would say, and then a black and white cruiser would be pulling up on my property; the homeless man would be in the back eating a sandwich, cuddled in a warm blanket, and I would be arrested for trying to kidnap a man (maybe even imprisoned for attempted murder). Of course I would claim that he was just an old man who’s been out on the streets a little too long, and lost more than a few of his marbles, and that might end that. But why the hell would I go through all of that trouble when I could have just hit the guy with a wrench and stuff him in myself?

  Yes, that is what I did.

  He started for the door in a quick hurry when he seen me grab for the wrench, but he slammed into the barn door unable to escape, and I came up behind him. When the metal met bone it made a hollow thud sound. I never really hit someone that hard before. I never really hit anyone at all, really. But I guess that’s what passion does to a man, right? Once your head is in the game, and you've got your heart set on something, there is not a thing in this world that could ever get in your way; and if it does, you’ll die fighting before you give up.

  I gave the machine a test run, like I do every time, and then proceeded to drag the homeless man’s unconscious body to the machine, open it, and kick at him until he was stuffed completely in. I ran my finger through my hair, because it was disheveled in my face from my moment of uncharacteristic violence.

  I looked inside at the old man, and for a moment I almost had this whispering sense of morality flicker up inside me like Chinese fireworks. But that totally died when I hit the switch.

  In the midst of the shadowy mist—and the raging electricity pulsating inside with such magical movements—the old homeless man began to rise from his unconscious slump as if he were Criss Angel performing a levitation illusion. Except this was no illusion.

  As the man was being cooked alive, his eyes and mouth were illuminated with bright blue light as if he were some kind of jack-o-lantern. He wasn’t spinning like the crow had, and that was because he weighed more than two hundred times what the bird did. He was, however, just as dead when I shut the machine off, and watched him fall back into his lifeless doll-like pose, propped up slightly on the back of the glass cylinder.

  The moment was mesmerizing.

  I waited, not long, but it felt long. I waited for the soul to start its whole freak-out-routine… and it did, let me tell you.

  It started with his arms. They lifted up slowly at first, as if being worked by a puppet master, ever so carefully; but out of nowhere they started trembling everywhere like loose helicopter blades. For a second, as I watched his arms violently flop, it reminded me of those inflatable floppy men (air dancers, I think they’re called) that you sometimes see outside of businesses to catch your attention.

  His legs started doing some kind of twitching too, but not as fast or aimless as the arms.

  That was just the beginning.

  Its eyes fell into the back of his head, turning them bloodshot and pupil-less. Foamy saliva exploded from the mouth, and his head began to forcefully rock forward and back, each time slamming into the back of the glass. This grew into something else when the man, which was no longer really a man, but some kind of creature, tensed up; all the muscles in the body imploded together is such a disgusting way, that I grimaced, but only for a moment, because that was when its whole body came lashing forward, right in front of me. Its skull literally shattered with the glass, sending shards of bloody red fragments into my face.

  Now that… I did not expect, I must admit. I had done my research, but I just wasn’t expecting the soul to have so much control over the body. I should have known, though, I suppose. The crow had been more than I expected. It was a goddamn feather storm in there. That crow was bouncing off the glass so hard, my soul trapper machine had momentarily turned into a pinball machine. If the soul could do that much with just a little bird, I should have expected that it would be ten times stronger with a human body.

  So, there I was, plunging to my back; the homeless man’s dead body lunging at me, blood flushing down its distorted and fried face.

&nbs
p; I screamed louder than I care to admit.

  The way it fell on me was more terrifying than anything. Have you ever heard the phrase “hit the ground running?” Well, he hit the ground (or in this case, me) flopping. Really flopping. Not like a fish does when it’s removed from the water, but it was better comparable to if you took a thin silk bag, and filled it with fireworks. Like the crow, its skin was rippling, and I felt it do just that while it was on top of my body. You never forget something like that. Like how you never forget the sound of a single fingernail slowly screeching down a chalkboard.

  I kicked at it, and struck it with open hands trying to get it off of me. I remember feeling my heart knock my chest into the ground while I was trying to crawl away from that tornado of spasms.

  I did get away, but it would come for me again. Every now and then it would get to its feet, partially, but collapse back to the floor. Sometimes getting in weird positions, as if it were playing a game of twister, all while tossing itself into the barn walls, rolling on my tables and desk, and seemingly flying through the air, clashing into stuff until the body was so bloody and bruised that I could no longer process the image of a human being.

  I was moving around just as much as it was, trying to escape from its conniption, when I managed to reach my axe. It was a big axe, too. Hanging there on the wall. Its faded blue metal blade wasn’t as sharp as it had once been, but it would surely do the